Curing Chronic Unhappiness–One Day at a Time

despair-257x300 Lord, deliver us from the #stronghold of chronic discontentment and #unhappiness.

Many of us are in an emotional limbo–counting on some future circumstance to unlock happiness in our lives. If only I could win the lottery, I would be happy. When I get old enough to leave home, I’ll be happy. If I could just lose weight or get a hair transplant, retire, find love, have a baby, travel, move out of this town, get a better job, get healed.

If only. Hope deferred and many sick hearts. So we rationalize that it’s ok to be unhappy now since we could possibly be happy later. But oh, that nagging question: if I ever get what I say will make me happy...will it? Or when I get there, will I find that I’m still discontent with my life? At what point do I cross the line from having a cryogenically-frozen hope into a place of being irredeemably miserable? What if I’m unable to even BE happy?

Boy, I just struck a nerve! Because unlike the diet and exercise and estate planning we rationalize that we’ll do “tomorrow,” this hits home on a deeper level. For sanity’s sake, there must be some point when we stop living out of our spiritual suitcases and emotional moving crates and say, “You know, I choose to be happy today. Right now in the middle of all this chaos and the things so desperately wrong and incomplete, I’m going to break out that bottle of bubbly I’ve been reserving and celebrate.” Bottle of bubbly? Yes, the dusty,”bubbly” happiness with the vintage label on it that we bought somewhere long ago, thinking we might store it away for a more deserving occasion.

Today might feel like a hollow occasion for celebration. There might actually appear to be no good reason to smile or be thankful. What if I break the seal on that happiness only to find out it’s not all that I’d hoped for? Why shatter the fantasy? Or, what if I wind up just wasting happiness on the place I’m in, and I never take steps to go after the things I feel I must have in order to feel complete? Isn’t it better to keep happiness in its display case and maintain the illusion that I can have a perfect circumstance eventually?

No.

Choose to be happy NOW. Now, at the worst possible time, while nothing’s going the way you it to. While frustration is suffocating you and your circumstances make you feel claustrophobic, trapped. Choose happiness now, not because IT has an expiration date, but because YOU do. And whether you are someone whose face flashes neon discontentment, or one of the untold millions who bury their unhappiness deep behind a facade of pretending they’re fine…fine…I’m FINE…I pray that your cover is now blown and that you are forced to deal with the elephant in the room. Before you reach the end of life and find that, all along, there was enough happiness allotted to spread out over a lifetime if you’d only chosen it.

Pray with me: Father, this may be one of the most important prayers I pray, next to my salvation! I need You to help me with this issue, this spiritual virus of discontentment. It’s been with me for so long now, it’s become part of me and I don’t know how to detach from it. Save me! Not just my soul, my spirit, but please save my emotional well-being. Fix what’s broken in me that’s forgotten how to just be happy. Forgive me for allowing my surroundings to choke out my thankfulness.

Jesus came to give me abundant life, not an existence on autopilot. This chronic lack of happiness is a cancer and I need Your Word to surgically cut it out of me. Please, wash me clean! Your Word says Your mercies are new every morning. It’s been a long night. Day is breaking and I reach to You for that new mercy. I’ll need it today. Teach me to think on the good and pleasant things. Help me to meditate on Your promises. Forgive my backslidings.

David prayed to You to create in him a clean heart, to renew a right spirit, and he asked for Your Spirit and mercy not to be separated from him…and then he asked You to restore the joy of Your salvation. Lord, I ask for no less. Fill me with Your Spirit, and with Your joy. Give me unspeakable, glorious joy that trumps even the “happiness card.” Your joy will get me through days when I don’t particularly feel happy. In reality, I may be in these circumstances for a while longer…your joy will undergird my choice to be happy even though things aren’t ideal just yet.

I trade up now. I’m swapping this feeling of heaviness for a garment of praise. I’ve been wearing black for far too long now. Please, hand me the loudest, most colorful, least circumstance-appropriate jacket on the rack! Until it comes natural, I will keep confessing happiness and wait for circumstances to line up with my confession.

I say this (whether or not I “feel” it):

Today is a good day. It’s Your gift to me, God. I will find the good in it. I will find the reasons to laugh and give thanks even if I have to write them down! I will stop putting my life on hold. Today, while it appears I’m still in debt, still sick, still lonely, still unfulfilled in my station of life, or still in some circumstance I’d rather not be in, I choose to be happy. While changing a flat or being stuck in traffic or in a smelly doctor’s office or the unemployment line, I choose to be happy. Though someone is betraying me, I choose to be happy. Though someone discriminates against or disrespects or mocks me, I choose to be happy. Though the devil tells me that my life will always be this bad (he lies), I choose to be happy. I will stop putting on fake happiness that people sometimes put on to make everyone think life is perfect–I choose to REALLY be happy.

I will stop saying “if only.” I will go into this day fully expecting and behaving as if everything in it is the best I’ve ever had. As I thank You, my gas station burrito becomes a feast. My mid-lot parking space is so much better than the one all the way out on the far end. And as I trust You, I receive Your peace to let go of hurts, to forgive, to release. I stop punishing myself for not measuring up and I will be happy now, though far from who I want to be. I can be happy later too; but until I get there, I will be happy while I work toward a better set of circumstances. I will be happy even though I’m needing more sleep and more money; though my knee is hurting or my kids all have the stomach flu or my neighbor’s dog won’t stop tearing open my garbage. I’m still alive; it’s not to late to make the best of what I’ve got, and be happy while I do it. It doesn’t mean I’m “settling” for less; I’m settling for MORE because I’m going to be happy now AND later, too!

Happiness (or, “hope-iness,” this first cousin of hope) is one of Your new mercies, Lord! I don’t need enough to last me a lifetime all in one day; I just need enough to last me for today. Like daily bread. There’s more tomorrow but I don’t have to wait till tomorrow for today’s portion. Those things I long for, You already know about. I put them in Your hands…but for right now, I’m no longer waiting till I get them to be happy. In Jesus’ name, today changes everything about how I view my life and my future. Thank You for helping me get it right. If I slip, hold me to this decision to be happy! Never again let me settle for hope deferred, Lord.

Frequency

radio

I remember a time when, here in these tightly-clustered mountains, an AM/FM radio signal had its work cut out for it. You pretty much had to settle for only being able to pick up the very closest station or two, and not necessarily with clarity. But for me, that didn’t work because I liked the kind of music most local stations didn’t play. So I would lie there in the bed at night, or later on be driving in the car, with some obscure, faraway station playing that was barely audible. Sometimes it would be competing with another station of similar frequency and you could hear both at the same time. So what did I do? I listened THROUGH the interference. I would disregard the static and the other voices and simply focus for as long as I could on that faintly central sound.

Nowadays in the digital age, we hardly ever tune into FM radio; but the reason I am sharing this isn’t so much about the “good old days” of technology but instead about cutting through interference to get to what you desire. Specifically, the voice of God.

In these last days, there is a heightening of spiritual activity. Many voices and much static tries to drown out and overpower and make of no effect the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Word tells us of a famine of the hearing of the Word of God, and I believe in part that is what we are experiencing in the form of static interference in the heavenlies. You are going to hear some loud voices denouncing your God, trying to shame you for believing in Him, or at least trying to shame you for believing EXCLUSIVELY in Him. There’s a lot of distracting noise and drama and chaos that at times causes the message to feel faint or garbled. Praise the Lord for good days, but other days you are going to have to listen THROUGH the interference. You will have to move that antenna around and hold the radio right up to your ear. Part of your survival in the final days before the Lord’s return will be keeping your desire SHARP, your senses focused. The world will offer many options of other gods and even competing similar frequencies so close that at face value it’ll be hard to tell which source you’re hearing…EXCEPT, Jesus assured us that His sheep know His voice and another they will not follow! He even invites us to try the spirits–weigh what you see, hear, and feel against the Word to see if it’s really of God or just another noise.

How badly do you want to hear from God? You can just shut off the receiver and say it’s too hard; there’s too much static and it’s too much trouble for too little return; maybe try again later. Or, you can do as I did with that old radio. When I really focused on what I was listening for, I would become less distracted by the noise and more in tune with what I had DEEP DESIRE to hear. Sure, it’d have been nice to have internet radio in the 1980’s, or at least money to buy the records I couldn’t afford, but that’s beside the point. I thirsted after a certain sound and this was my only means of getting it. There’s a bittersweetness in that hard-sought voice of God. You might wish there were a gallon of that water but you will savor the droplets like a dying man. I made no apology for my affection, and I didn’t let my location, my liabilities, or my lack stop me from listening with all my might. Shouldn’t I at LEAST be willing to put that same diligence toward hearkening to God’s voice that I once did into trying to listen to a little jazz radio, smack dab in the heart of bluegrass country?

Tune out the distractions, for there are many, and LISTEN for God. You won’t be denied.

Cast Down, But Not Destroyed

on-bike — This is Dana and me, pictured just doing what we’d loved ever since 2001. We logged thousands of miles on motorcycle rides and long road trips. Who knew that one seemingly uneventful night in October 2010, just miles from our home, it would all take such a frightening tumble?

In commemoration of God sparing our life on a cold October night, I’m expanding a little devotional I wrote in April 2011. Most of what’s in here is taken from the piece, “Trust and You Won’t Be Crushed.”

It was just at the edge of dusk, 6 years ago this evening, when I woke up to find that I was lying flat on my back on the cold pavement. I remembered seeing the dog run out in front of our motorcycle; and I remembered us bracing and hitting it, then it was like being tumbled in a dark clothes dryer. There hadn’t even been time to be scared, much less avoid the impact. How long had I been unconscious? Someone had already stood up our motorcycle, and a couple of men were looking through the tour pack for some ID. I could see out the corner of my eye that Dana was lying about 10 feet away from me, but I couldn’t hear him speak and I couldn’t see if he was moving. People standing over us were saying things that indicated to me that we were both bad off.

At first I couldn’t even talk, and it was so hard to breathe—I suppose from having had the wind knocked out of me. My helmet was shattered. Later I would find that I had a basal skull fracture as well as a fractured bone in my neck. I vaguely remember a woman holding my helmet and talking about how messed up it was. Someone commented that my head was bleeding. I wanted to get to Dana but I couldn’t raise up; and they were trying to keep me still so they could put me on a backboard. My arm was twisted over my head and I thought it was dislocated, but was told later that the shoulder was broken in two places. In the midst of the confusion and the excruciating pain, reality began to set in about what had just happened. The loud noise of onlookers and emergency workers was making me more and more uncomfortable as I struggled to get someone to tell me whether my husband was ok. A couple knelt on the ground and asked if they could pray with me; and as they prayed, the Holy Spirit rose up inside me and I began to pray loudly in Him. It sounded like an authoritative voice not my own was declaring boundaries around the two of us! As the noise of urgency began to subside in His presence, I could hear, quite clearly, the Lord whisper just one word to me…“COVENANT.” And in that moment, I knew exactly what He meant. I began to cry and say, “Thank you, God, for rebuking the devourer for our sakes!” A peace I can’t even begin to describe rested on me, one that would get me through the longest night of my life.

I’m told for a little while at the first hospital, Dana was conscious, and he was giving them fits; wanting to come and get me and take me home. We were airlifted, one at a time, from Williamson Memorial to St. Mary’s. I begged the paramedics to elevate my head. I felt like I would absolutely smother to death flat on my back, and would feel that way for the remainder of the night. No one would move me though, for fear of a spinal cord injury. I was more afraid of suffocating than I was of being badly hurt. Once at St. Mary’s, my stepson Coby held my hand and coached me to breathe in sync with him while they repositioned my broken shoulder. The only relief I had from the discomfort was to occasionally lose consciousness. Then, as I lay on a gurney in the hallway, waiting to go into a CT scan, a doctor came up and with no expression whatsoever, told me, “Your husband is unconscious and has a serious brain injury. His brain has begun to swell. We’ll do what we can.” With that, she turned and left. I had to make up my mind right then and there…am I going to trust God or am I going to collapse under a weight of fear? I chose to trust God, and that’s exactly what I called out to her back as she was walking away.

For just a little while, they wheeled me into a holding room with Dana. He was lying there, eyes closed, not moving. I reached my fingers through the bars on our gurneys, gripped his hand, and prayed for him. Looking back now, I wonder whether the doctors might have thought he was going to die, and they were giving me a chance to say goodbye. But I spoke to him this Scripture which came to my remembrance, before they wheeled us in two different directions, “(You) shall live and not die, to declare the works of the Lord.” (Psalm 118:17)

dana-coma — Dana, lying near death and comatose for 17 days after our accident. Swollen almost beyond recognition, he had multiple brain bleeds, and fractures throughout his body, and had developed the deadly condition called Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. This picture was a couple of weeks into the ordeal…I couldn’t bring myself to photograph him at first, and wouldn’t again for at least another month.

That was a long first night in the hospital. Eventually, by the wee hours of dawn, I felt like I could breathe again, but I would have to watch for the next several weeks as a machine did the breathing for Dana. Angels on assignment kept vigil over him, as did family and friends around the clock for the first nearly three weeks. I was too sick and injured to sit up with him for the first week or so, even though I stayed nearby and spent as much time as I could in his room.

There are those times when we have to choose to believe, or be crushed under the weight of despair. And there are times when we can’t just think it or hope it…we have to hear ourselves say it—I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE. I learned to say it out loud, and often, beginning that first night. I stood on the Word and quoted Scripture as I stood in the gap, and prayed day and night over my husband. When anxious or despairing thoughts tried to do war internally in my soul, I smiled on the outside in front of others; and I would privately share my sorrows and fears with Jesus. I bet some folks thought I’d knocked my brains out on that pavement, when I’d counter the negative news with what God’s Word says… but I really didn’t care. This was a battle for my husband’s very life. The Holy Spirit cautioned me to set a watch on my lips. Had I allowed myself to give voice to fear or unbelief, my actions would have followed. Sometimes I actually wanted to let my vulnerability show, to cry on someone’s shoulder, but the Lord made me brave in the face of a lonely secret: my words were declaring what I didn’t always feel in the natural! Faith does it even when we are scared, friends. And God proved faithful. When pneumonia and infections came, He kept Dana from succumbing. When acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) threatened to cause his lungs, one of which had already been collapsed, to just deteriorate and stop working altogether, God was there. When Dana lay so long with his eyes partially open that the whites turned into what looked like pink sponges, God spared his sight. Through blood clots, through huge wounds that were left undiscovered and untreated on the back of his head because of the position he had to lie in, through an unbelievably high fever that could have cooked his already-damaged brain, God kept him. And when they had to bring the crash cart as he came out from surgery for being trached, God did not let him die. When I had to sign consent for them to give him a special paralytic drug that totally disabled his functions so that his body would stop fighting the respirator, God gave me peace that He would keep Dana alive. So many miracles that came, so much blessed assurance just in the nick of time. I still marvel over how the Lord preserved my husband through the next six weeks without a bite to eat or even a sip of water in his parched throat and mouth. He was tube-fed and intravenously hydrated all that time.

img00028-20101211-1331 — Dana had to go 43 days with nothing by mouth. In this picture, he had not yet gained the ability to swallow and had to be fed through a tube in his stomach. We still had about 5 weeks to go before we could leave the hospital, and then another 5 months before we could move back into our own house.

When Dana regained consciousness in the second hospital, he couldn’t speak, but because he made eye contact with us and seemed to understand us when we talked to him, we assumed he was ok; however, when at last they capped his trach and he was able to speak, it became apparent that the head injury was affecting his personality and his cognizance significantly. He was hallucinating, saying things out of character, behaving not like himself. I didn’t recognize the man inside the man; and I thank the Holy Spirit for holding onto me and numbing the pain of uncertainty of how long Dana would be this stranger. His behavior begin to grow worse just as we moved him to the rehab hospital, and the brain injury made him very combative and angry and hard to handle. Because he only slept for very short periods of time, so did I. He acted at times like he despised me, but would go into an anxiety mode if I even left to step into the restroom. He couldn’t even walk yet without a walker and a person or two at his elbows; but one night managed to get out of bed and wobble around on that walker, swearing he was going to find the exit and go home…in 6 inches of snow. I had to lie to him (forgive me, Lord!) and tell him they bolted the exits from the outside after visiting hours were over…it was the only way to settle him down and make him go back to his bed! At one point, the hallucinations were so bad, he even thought he was married to two different women at the same time–me and me. He told me, “She’s good to me, but YOU are the one I love.” Folks, this wasn’t a cake walk. At times it has been downright scary and it took every ounce of faith I could muster. If God hadn’t held us in His hand, we couldn’t have made it. I only share these very private memories with you because I want you to understand what God’s brought us from, and how He kept bad situations from spiraling completely out of control. I knew from the start that there were ways this situation could’ve been infinitely worse…yet the Lord was merciful.

img00030-20101228-1317 — Learning to stand—and *walk*—again. It was at times a very hard process.

The Word and our prayer partners kept me together as I stayed for nearly three months either right there with him or close by. I only left Huntington to come home a few times to catch up my work, to get clean clothes, pay bills, etc., then right back to the hospital. Until he was able to be moved to the rehab hospital in December, I’d stayed at a hospitality house. I’d come come home on a Thursday afternoon, work for 24 straight hours on the parts of my job that couldn’t be handled remotely on my laptop; and then Dana’s dad would drive me back (I was in a neck brace and a sling, so I couldn’t drive for quite some time). At the rehab hospital, I was finally able to move into his room with him. I just set myself an office up in the corner and kept working! And, friends and family kept driving the nearly two-hour drive to Huntington to those three hospitals. We had a steady stream of visitors. I’ll never be able to thank them for being there for us…that they even cared this much for us moves me to tears.

On January 21, 2011, Dana was finally released from the hospital. Even now, he remembers nothing about his hospital stays except for vague little bits the last couple of days or so. Leaving the hospital was another chapter, and another time when trusting God was critical to survival. I still was concerned about his healing brain and whether I’d be able to do anything with him if he had another “episode” like the night he tried to leave the hospital! We weren’t able to go directly home. We would spend the next four months in his dad’s den–him in a hospital bed and me on a couch beside him, because Dana was still in a wheelchair and walker and couldn’t climb the steps to our house. He also still had to have his liquids thickened and his solids very soft, to keep from choking on his food from his damaged trachea. God bless Joe and Thelma for persevering right there with us. We couldn’t have made it through this without them. Near the end of May, seven long months after our ordeal, we got to sleep in our own bed again for the first time.

Dana spent 82 days in 3 hospitals, and couldn’t even swallow an ice chip for the first 43 days. He lay in the ICU trauma ward for 17 days comatose, and running an insanely high fever for several days. He had multiple fractures, multiple brain bleeds, and a series of serious complications; but when Satan tried to take him out, God drew the line and said, “No.”

Though it’s been at times a physically and emotionally exhausting 6 years for both Dana and me, we have not lost our joy and we have not lost our love for life and one another. God has been so good to us. We have adjusted to a “new normal,” and part of it is to lighten up a little and find humor in what would otherwise be frustrating or difficult or just…different. The head injury left Dana’s personality and behaviors a tad changed from before, but mostly in very good ways. I think of it as “Dana’s personality—on steroids.” 😉 Dana has a childlike, literal faith that God can and will do exactly what He says. I’ve watched the Lord transform a lukewarm/backslidden man who’d completely stopped serving God before our wreck into a mighty man of God who prays for hours each day, witnesses to others continually, and encourages folks to believe and speak the Word. (I will draw an exception here however, and I would be remiss in leaving this out: when he had stopped professing faith and attending church before our wreck, he was still diligent to tithe and give. He would repeatedly tell me on payday: “Whatever you do, don’t forget to pay tithe and give offerings on my check. I may not be living right but I won’t rob God!” Could it be that, in the time where our lives hung in the balance, God honored a man’s tenacity in this small thing????). What God has done and continues to do in Dana’s life, inside and out, is quite miraculous. We still confess and believe for the areas of restoration that are yet to manifest. We believe that what still needs to become whole will be whole again– as our friend Cathy had confessed over us repeatedly, “nothing broken, nothing missing, nothing lost.” We have surely come from a mighty long way.

And God proved to me that He doesn’t leave; He didn’t leave me and He won’t abandon you, either! Even on those days when you feel frightened, alone, ashamed of your personal struggles, numb to all emotion or crying uncontrollably, He’s there. He watches over His Word to perform it. Our job is to take that Word and keep speaking it over our lives even when there’s no evidence whatsoever yet that it’s doing a bit of good. We are to speak it even when our hearts are hollow and the words seem to fall to the ground. The answer will come if you and I will pray and not faint; or if we fall, we keep getting back up as often as it takes. There were days when I was so overwhelmed that I wished I’d died that night on the pavement, but God restored joy to my life and a stronger faith in His faithfulness! God helped Dana and me to emerge from a catastrophic situation to become more resolute in our faith, more devoted to one another, and hopefully better people for having persevered during this detour on our journey.

10712707_10152303115901371_6100103572424308812_n — 10/28/2014 – Standing in the approximate area where our bike went down four years earlier. A sobering feeling of gratitude washed over me as we looked around this spot where God spared our lives! Even now when I drive through that area, sometimes emotion wells up inside me as I ponder the goodness and mercy of God.

I’m telling you, friends, you need Jesus. You need Him, your marriage needs Him, your family needs Him to carry you through times like this. It’s not a matter of if you’ll ever have to go through hard seasons, but when..and when you do, faith in God can preserve your very sanity. Covenant relationship with God doesn’t mean you’ll never face difficulty. It can, however, mean the difference between you surviving or being mowed down by the enemy. It will keep you when you go through depression, through loss, through grave uncertainty, through the outright unfair happenings of life in this fallen world; and on the other side of your storm, God will pull out a mysterious parcel and hand back to you. You will find that you didn’t lose your joy and innocence after all; He’d wrapped it securely in the Holy Spirit’s comfort and kept it from being annihilated by the tribulation of life.

Sooner or later, we all have to face the most difficult time of our lives. Are you prepared? God can keep you from falling apart. I can say that because, six years later, Dana and I are still held together by the duct tape of God’s wonderful, saving grace. Even these fractured pieces form something beautiful…like a prism of glass that scatters light in every direction, testifying that truly, love never fails.

“But the LORD God keeps me from being disgraced. So I refuse to give up, because I know God will never let me down.” Isaiah 50:7 CEV

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Running the Backup Plan Aground…for Good

fiashing-net Probably the loneliest day of Peter’s whole fishing career was when he re-launched the S.S. Simon and tried to just be a fisherman again after following Jesus. The romantic call of the sea and the nostalgic smell of the salty nets held little sway over him now. After all, a Simon reed can easily sway in the wind; but now his name was Petra, a solid rock. The wind of recklessness and wavering was no longer his domain. I wonder if his pivotal decision to finally return to the disciples and Jesus came from an instant replay of that day when Jesus asked the twelve whether they, too, would abandon Him like others who were turned off by certain elements of His teaching. Peter replied, “Where else would we go…YOU have the words of eternal life!” Perhaps it was the memory of this moment that caused him to finally sever all ties with his backup plan and dedicate the rest of his life to serving his True Source.

Once God has expanded your boundaries to accommodate the person He’s growing you to be, you can never quite fit back into your original container. Oh, to be certain, we have to make a living, support our families, and in general, be exposed to the world if they are to be exposed to US and to the Gospel we share. However, if you feel your failures have put you out of commission to serve the Lord and carry the Good News, I beg you to think of Peter and his brief turning away from his calling. His most victorious, passionate days would come after he realized that his success lay in Jesus within him instead of in his own strength. The pages in his dossier that revealed days of his least savory performance were only left in the file because they were amended to show the amazing comeback in each circumstance. It no longer mattered that there were blotches on his record…the blotches were a setup for an amazing finish of, well, Biblical proportions. Peter’s last half of his journey as God’s “petra man” far exceeded his former days; for just forty days after Jesus ascended to heaven, the Comforter came and Peter got to be one of the first people on earth to operate under this release of power from on high!

So why are you reverting to your backup plan, minister, leader, disciple, pioneer? If God called you, and you have undealt-with wrongs, right them. Even if it means you have to prove yourself all over again and feel the humiliation of a tarnished reputation, be quick to repent, to forgive, to make restitution, to accept the mercy and forgiveness of the One Who asks nothing more of you than to “feed My lambs…feed My sheep.” You can build character, stability, integrity if you’re willing…and if you can’t return to the place where it all went south, God can absolutely redeem you to a different assignment, with perhaps even more powerful impact! Eventually your failures will be yesterday’s news to those around you; and even if they should never quite be forgotten, God will weave a victory comeback into even that part of your story. The truth is, whether you’re used in the same way, a lesser way, or a greater way, you’ll never be free of that call to a destiny of His design. It’s bigger than that small, safe, predictable life you once envisioned for yourself.

Run that backup plan into a sandbar and be done with it. Put a “For Sale” sign on your escape vehicle. Boom or bust, go all out this second (or even third or fourth) time around. Have a Peter kind of finish. Even as a martyr for his faith, he went out on his own terms–better yet, he finished on God’s terms. Come back home, wandering servant of Christ. He still has need of your part….

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Unhooking from Guilt

^“So, my brothers and sisters, you owe the flesh nothing! You do not need to live according to its ways, so abandon its oppressive regime.” (Romans 8:12, VOICE translation)

One of the quickest ways someone can distance me from him or her is to try to lay a guilt trip on me. Call it a quirk in my personality, but I don’t cotton well to being nagged at or manipulated through false guilt. (Just so everyone knows…when I’m distant or slow to return calls and emails, there really is a good reason.) And yet, when I look over my life, so many of the bad decisions I have made have been in times when I’ve allowed guilt to sink its hooks into me. While I shy away from people who try to turn me into a chess pawn, I still have yet to completely break away from self-imposed guilt—that drives me to work myself into oblivion for fear that I haven’t given enough. As you’re reading this, chances are, you are shaking your head in agreement because you too wrestle with a life out of balance.

So you may say, “A little guilt never hurt anyone.” There’s a huge difference between conviction and condemnation, friends. The Holy Spirit convicts. Conviction is an admonishment that is always intent on bringing us up higher in our relationship with God. Conviction challenges us to do the right thing regarding our relationships with God and man. Conviction will steer us away from making costly, wrong decisions. Once we make the right choices, the conviction then lifts…and we go on about our way, liberated and our peace still intact.

Condemnation, on the other hand, has no intent on making us better. Condemnation is Satan’s (and sometimes, people’s) tool to keep you in a holding pattern of feeling nothing you do will ever be good enough. Condemnation doesn’t want your debt paid. It won’t let you free from its manipulation, because the one wielding condemnation against you retains an advantage over you. You’re under that person’s thumbnail. You will exhaust your last resource just to placate the nagging, and still it won’t go away. Condemnation affords no peace. That’s a prison without walls.

Guilt steals your health. I’ve been there. I’ve hung onto toxic relationships sometimes for years, and to my detriment. I’ve given up so much personal enrichment time that it’s incalculable. Whose fault is it? Most certainly mine. Exercise and right amounts of sleep and solitude and prayer and Word time have sometimes gone right out the window, because I reasoned that I just HAD to work more…doing things other people were putting on my ever-growing to do list. (Don’t expect that other people will recognize and respect your need for some personal space. They’ll keep taking as long as there’s a drop of you to give!) My list has grown to unmanageable proportions because I wouldn’t say no. Guilt saw to that. Without safe boundaries, all the joy has at times leaked right out of me. And you know what? God isn’t in one bit of it. He isn’t glorified at all when my health and mental health are at times a wreck; or that I have grown overweight and dangerously out of condition, or that I resent being me. Know what God does and doesn’t give you the green light to add to your schedule. Ask Him. Even if it’s a good thing in and of itself, it might not be in His plan for you in particular…and He isn’t obligated to finish what He didn’t author! Don’t let guilt-laden activities weaken your immune system and cause you to become sick!

Seasons are temporary. Don’t let guilt make them permanent. There are seasons in our lives when we do find ourselves pulled-on out of necessity. You may be caring for a sick spouse or aging parent right now, or several small children. And when you hear someone say, “You’ve got to take some time away. You have to take better care of yourself. You can’t keep going forever with no down time,” it would sound so good and right if not for that nagging voice of guilt. Even God’s voice can be heard, however muffled by the screams of the urgent present, pleading with you to slow down. You have a choice at this point: you can listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit that says, “Pace yourself. Work on boundaries and balance. Keep God first and make enough time for yourself before you pour out to other people. Remember, this season will pass; and you need your health now as well as after these demands are no longer upon you. Take care of your spirit, soul and body for the long haul!” And deep in your spirit, you know it’s a right word. Whether you listen, or you cave into the fear that others will judge you unfairly, it’s a call you’re going to have to make.

I’ll never forget a lesson I learned when flying a few years ago. As the attendant went through safety protocol with us, she explained that, if the oxygen masks dropped out of the ceiling, parents of small children must apply their own masks first. Wow. And the reason being, if the parent were to pass out, he or she wouldn’t be able to save the child. How many times over your life has guilt caused you to do some things in the exact opposite order? We become so busy doing the work of the Lord that we neglect to walk in the cool of the day with Him–and when I say “we” I’m even including you pastors who find yourself in this same position! May I remind you, if you let yourself go physically and spiritually to pot, you will be of no benefit to anyone else.

Go ahead and take that day off. If someone offers to float you out, take him or her up on the offer. Go for a walk and then watch a clean, funny movie (maybe with popcorn or an ice cream!). You’ll feel a whole lot better. Remember, if you turn down help, not even then will guilt leave you alone. It’ll always try to be there telling you that you should be doing more. Since guilt won’t be satisfied, you may as well go ahead and find some joy and peace in your life! Let guilt go aggravate someone else for a change. Most importantly, ask GOD to order your steps. When you are starting to dip into your reserves, He can replenish you. Be prepared for Him to say no sometimes. Our pastor, Mitchell Bias, shares sometimes how his late mother-in-law, Edith, has called him on a couple of occasions and said, “The Lord says you are to do nothing but REST today. Don’t even leave the house!” Give yourself permission to back away and rest. Ask God to put people in your life who will affirm what He’s ordained for you–a life in harmony and balance. God won’t wreck your health to advance His cause. He has too many resources and people out there to rely solely on you. We need to be reminded of these things once in a while!

Guilt perpetuates your bad habits onto your posterity. It will make you a bad parent. It won’t let you discipline your kids or allow them to grow up and become independent. It will keep you from letting them encounter some hardships that develop character, because you’re always being the buffer between them and their problems. Guilt will have you paying off all their debts (and there will always be more where that came from because they know you have deep pockets and…yes…guilt). Moreover, it will have you raising your grandkids instead of requiring their parents to shoulder the responsibility. Guilt will even superimpose itself on your kids…because once you are infected with guilt, you’ll use it to manipulate and control them all their adult lives. You’ll pout and get mad when they aren’t coming around often enough to suit you. You’ll use guilt as a wedge between your kids and their spouses, between your kids and their kids. IF YOU ARE AN “I SHOULD HAVE DONE MORE” ADDICT, YOU WILL IN TURN MAKE UNREASONABLE DEMANDS ON THOSE YOU LOVE!

When we consider setting up boundaries of moderation, the enemy is not going to like it. Guilt says, “You selfish thing…you call yourself a Christian and Christians are not supposed have a life.” What a bunch of baloney! Jesus came to give you ABUNDANT life, not an empty-shell existence. Somewhere among the day-to-day demands of your life, He can help you find that happy medium which gets you to the other side of the season you’re in.

Difficult seasons are temporary. They’re MEANT to be temporary. And when you’re on the other side of them, if you truly know who you are in Christ, your self-worth isn’t going to require you being a human vending machine for the rest of your life. After the time passes when you were under great demand, re-calibrate and learn to enjoy NOT being on call 24/7. You really can enjoy being fruitful without being overburdened, endlessly under life-leaching pressure, and always at everyone else’s beck and call. Don’t allow guilt to turn you into a codependent…or you’ll imprison yourself in a mode that allows others to exploit your inability to say no!

Guilt…its own reward? You can let guilt or even the need for people to recognize “poor old noble you” drive you to play the martyr. I’m being harsh here, but let’s face it: having people recognize you as indispensable is a cheap swap for walking in God’s best will for your life. When guilt has its way with us long enough, we start craving affirmation from man rather than God. Whether it’s pity or admiration we wind up desiring, it becomes the drug of choice to ease the guilt throbbing between our temples. So we wind up trying to do even more so that people when notice our sacrificial nature and praise us for it. Although Jesus was using a parable concerning giving alms, I want you to take this to heart: He spoke of people who give to the poor, in ways that they could show it off to other people and be recognized by man. He said that they already have their reward. Did you know that if you neglect what God’s will is for your life just for the recognition of being the person no one else can do without, you already have your reward? When I’m in up at night over interest-bearing debts, because guilt motivated me at Christmas to max out my credit cards beyond my means; or I’ve gone 3 years without a vacation because I was “too busy” to take time off; or the doctor says I’ve developed some degenerative disease because being a workaholic was more attractive than following God’s plan for discipline and balance…I don’t like the idea that the mess I’m in is actually my reward. It’s pretty hollow. When you’re in over your head, who really cares whether someone else admired you at one time for your lack of moderation? Walk after the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill these pesky lusts of the flesh that are the devil’s dirty bombs designed to steal, kill and destroy! Sometimes God is going to move you away from the spotlight, away from sowing into bad ground, or wasting your time and energy on what won’t bear real fruit…and believe me, it’s a good thing that He does this. Listen and be obedient when He pulls you out of involvement in matters He doesn’t want you meddling in! Only HE is omnipotent and omnipresent!

No one’s taking this away from me. In recent days and weeks, I’ve been trying to take all these things to heart. I’ve been experiencing burnout big-time, and God is calling me to start lightening the load. The first things that get sacrificed when someone wants something of me are the very things that give me life. I’ll skip exercise…and I’ve done it for years. I’ll shorten my prayer time or try to do it on the fly. I’ll neglect my housework and not even see the mess I’m stepping over to get to that next thing on my to do list. I’ll deny myself recreation and travel and the solitude which is so important to the writer God has called me to be. I will go days at a time without looking into a mirror, and when I do, I see someone I don’t recognize. Older, not vibrant and enjoying her life.

When I woke up this morning, even though I’d been busy till 3 AM and had cleared out my inbox before nodding off, it was already filling up again. Part of me wanted to say, “You know, people will think I’m a slacker if I don’t fly right into these things for them.” Guilt. But you know what? I got dressed and I got on the elliptical machine..something I wasn’t doing for myself even as recent as a week ago. And for 30 minutes my chubby self said out loud as I sweated and panted, “No one’s taking this away from me. This is mine.” Yeah, I’d rather have been doing something a little more enjoyable, but I’m going to MAKE myself become disciplined to set some boundaries. And if I have to psyche myself into thinking that exercise machine is something I can’t bear to do without, I’m going to learn how to fight for my fitness time. I’m making it my goal not to give up any more real estate in my life in areas of spiritual and physical maintenance. God has something important for me to do, and I can no longer afford to neglect the one vehicle I’ve been given to transport me through this short vapor life. Neither can you…I don’t care how important you are.

Jesus did not cower to guilt, and neither should we. Remember, Jesus was moved by love, by compassion, by empathy, by the faith of others, and even a time or two, by righteous (sinless) anger…but He was never moved by guilt. I can’t find one instance where He got out of the will of God because of someone or something pressuring Him or guilt-tripping Him into doing the wrong thing. He got talked about sometimes, and was misunderstood by many, but He never let that manipulate Him out of His identity. Even when Satan tempted Him to prove that He was the Son of God, He was not moved; He stood His ground. He would not be bullied into proving Himself. And a number of times we read where He regularly separated Himself from people to just get alone with God. There were folks who would just had to wait on Him, but He wasn’t going to cut His time short doing what was needed in order for Him to really do what was needed! I want a Jesus kind of restraint. I want to be steadfast and immovable. I want to be disciplined and balanced and have self-control that shuts out the drive to under-prepare and over-achieve. I don’t want guilt to have a ring in my nose, leading me to live in ways that compromise my health and my peace. I only have to please God; and if I am feeling a spirit of guilt instead of peace, then I’m hearing the wrong voice. Jesus says His sheep hear HIS voice and another they will not follow! May we all recognize whose voice we are hearing at any given time, and discern whether that voice is to be followed, ignored, or even silenced!

“Father, help us to voluntarily remove ourselves from the court of public opinion! May we keep our eyes and ears focused on You rather than the endless expectations of others. Help us to shut out the voice of the Accuser which says we can never do enough, never be enough. Conviction is Your righteous voice that will never place unreasonable demands upon us. Conviction releases peace and never an insatiable unrest in our lives because obedience brings a finality and a reward. Condemnation, however, keeps us walking by works instead of faith, and that’s never where You intended us to go. We rebuke the spirit of guilt from our lives, and will stop living in the dimension of always owing and never being able to pay in full. We submit ourselves to You and we resist the Accuser! He must flee from us, and take all his unreasonable demands with him! In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

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Mirror, Mirror

It is so critical that we put our attitudes and hidden heart issues on the altar, and become so immersed in the Word that we aren’t blind to undealt-with sin and/or weights. We can have every potential to do great things—even have had prophetic words spoken over us about our gifts elevating us to leadership or notoriety—and negate the prophetic word through pride, narcissism, jealousy, or fear. Instead of being angry at those we perceive to hold us back, and instead of being envious of others who possess our same potential, we must deal with that pesky hidden man of the heart. If there are unforgiveness issues stemming back even to our childhood, or healing that needs to happen when we release those who’ve hurt us, we must do the work. If we fail to do so, we will taxi the runway back and forth but never gain the momentum to get off the ground. Still more tragic, we risk imprinting our character flaws on our children by forcefully living vicariously through them, by repeating abuses on them that we experienced, or by failing to desire success for them that exceeds our own. Even very good people can be trapped in a holding pattern, mind you…disqualified over things that could be fixed!

Father, help us not to be our own worst enemy. You are fully-aware of even what we don’t see about ourselves–those damaged, flawed, or underdeveloped matters of character that we haven’t yet recognized or owned-up to. We will stop blaming others for our lack of success and begin to look inwardly, with humility and a quick-to-repent heart, for what needs purged from our character. Even if we don’t aspire to promotion of some kind, coddling wrong attitudes and negative emotions is a behavior not pleasing to You; and as badly as we want not to feel like a failure in our destiny, we want to find favor in Your sight even more. As David prayed after his hidden sin bubbled to the surface, likewise create in us a clean heart and renewed right spirit. See if there be (expose) any wicked way in us; and after the diseased element in our hearts is purged, restore the joy of our salvation. May we bear good fruit—30, 60, 100-fold, unhindered by toxic emotions, attitudes, and behavior.

You discipline those whom You love…and we know You love us too much to leave us messed-up. We don’t want to be those Your Word speaks of whose neck becomes hardened from having to be chastised often. Help us get it right, to learn and be willing to change. Remove the blinders, and after we’ve seen ourselves without the wax coating, make us whole—perfect and entire, lacking nothing. Give us courage to allow ourselves to be overhauled from the inside out. We ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.

The Vagabond Spirit

ghost There are a lot of paranormal shows and books that talk about ghosts being the wandering souls of the dead who still seek closure. Though I’m not blogging today to argue the existence or nonexistence of ghosts (smile), hold that thought about wandering spirits. I’m really going somewhere with this.

All around us (perhaps even a few are reading this post) are millions of living people who walk around with a spirit of restlessness that they’ve not been able to shake; this spirit sabotages everything they set their hands to. That’s a haunting far scarier than the things that go bump in the night—being stuck with an inability to commit or to find satisfaction in our already-blessed lives. So these persons are constantly changing careers, in and out of relationships, church-hopping, changing college majors a dozen times, moving from state to state, and in general, never able to just unpack all the boxes and sink roots.

I’m speaking both figuratively and literally here. And while I realize the nature of some vocations, ministries, and dreams involve being flexible and open to frequent changes, many people simply have issues with “stick-to-it-iveness.” One foot is planted firmly while the other has the sprinter’s shoe firmly laced up and ready to bolt. One eye is on the spouse or fiancé while the other is scanning other options, just in case the relationship fails to remain exciting and new. And church membership? Seriously? That person has a laundry list of every pastor who has hurt him or her, of every church that’s failed to be stimulating enough to earn permanent home status. Ask where he or she is connected and you’ll get an uncomfortable stuttering of, “Um, I’m kind of in-between churches right now.” I bet you know at least one person like this…and I hope for your sake that person isn’t staring back at you in the mirror. If he/she is, don’t be discouraged or feel condemned! We are going to talk a little about this issue and pray together.

There is nothing wrong with God-ordained change. Moses was getting up in years when God had him switch from herding flocks to herding people. Sometimes we even make bad choices that warrant change. Outside factors can leave us trying to find a new job, requiring us to move. I’m not talking about these types of occasional milestone situations; I’m addressing the curse of never being willing to commit—truly sell out for a cause–that can rob an entire life’s sense of accomplishment and fruitfulness.

The existence of a vagabond spirit is just as prevalent in seemingly-stable environments as it is among people who abandon their families and go live under bridges. Oh, it may not manifest as being the same thing, but the end results are not so dissimilar. Person can’t deal with mundaneness of stability, so person exchanges stable environment for a possibly unhealthy, unfruitful lifestyle of hobo-esque wandering. And sadly, the very thing which the person overtaken with a vagabond spirit is hoping to gain is the thing he or she forfeits in the name of freedom. Yeah, just like a ghost…wandering aimlessly in search of resolve.

There is hope for the wandering soul. It lies in submitting ourselves totally to God’s will; reading His Word, talking (and listening) to Him, disciplining ourselves, and admitting we have need of deliverance from the fear of commitment.

Father, break the “ghost syndrome” off Your people, we ask in Jesus’ name. We were not meant to be in a perpetual state of limbo in our lives. You began a good work in us and will finish it; and You designed us to walk in completeness. You have assignments for us–jobs, families, churches, life plans, goals, callings–that were meant to have a victorious, finished outcome. When we are faced with hardships, help us not to abandon our posts in continual hope that the pastures are perhaps greener somewhere else. Sure, it’s easier to quit, to lose by default; but why should we not instead…win?

Help us not to have chronic detachment that never allows us to stay and see things through. Help us to be people of covenant, people of our word, people of principle. When You end a particular season in our lives (and on occasion You do), it’s never left in chaos and confusion; that’s not how You operate. No, You have right order and a peace that accompanies every change that You orchestrate personally in our lives. Give us tenacity—the kind that sets us up for favor, promotion, and utter blessing. Give us an ear that hears the voice of the Good Shepherd and is keener to His voice than even to the sound of opportunity knocking. Not every knock is something or someone sent by God! We won’t open doors You don’t instruct us to open. We will be neither unable to commit, nor too stubborn to obey when You order change. We will be balanced; we will be able to be in a fixed place/circumstance for as long as You ordain, without being attached to the world and things of the world. We will find joy in the assignments You give us; and instead of being driven to find the next big thing that fuels our adrenaline, we’ll linger long enough to rest, reflect, give thanks, and enjoy the work of our hands! Bless us with a deep appreciation of commitment that makes having variety and mobility safe instead of destructive to Your best for us. We will bring the fruit of finishing to You instead of leaving a littered path of abandoned missions.

By allowing You to establish borders in our lives through accountability and covenant relationship, we poise ourselves to be fruitful and multiply. We prove ourselves fit, through our faithfulness in a few things, to be made rulers over many. Thank You, Lord, that Your children are being loosed from the “ghost” mentality. Thank You for casting out the vagabond spirit that denies us satisfaction in commitment. We are alive in You–and we are not aimlessly wandering souls! In Jesus’ name we ask and give thanks for answered prayer!

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The Two-Sided Sickle

For the word of God is living and active and full of power [making it operative, energizing, and effective]. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of the soul and spirit [the completeness of a person], and of both joints and marrow [the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and judging the very thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12 AMP

When I was a kid, my parents and grandparents lived side-by-side and the only fence we had was around the two properties. It was wonderful to have a big, collective yard to play in, even though our neighborhood was laid out in a way to where most folks had a 40 ft section of land and no more. Our ground was a little swampy because I’m told that at one time that’s exactly what it was–swamp property. The dirt was rather dry on Grandpa’s side, but very rich on the left side of our house…so what little bit of gardening we were able to do between the two yards was sort of divided up by what grows best in each particular type of soil. A topic perhaps for another post…

Anyway, for some reason this morning I’m remembering this old sickle in Grandpa’s tools, the one whose wooden handle left a big splinter in the palm of my hand before I reacted to his warning not to play with it. (Love his heart, he used black electrical tape on everything else…how that handle escaped his attention I’ll never know.) Grandpa’s warning came because he was worried about me chopping off my leg; but the splinter was lesson enough to keep my hands off it in the future. Now, this sickle didn’t see much action because Grandpa’s primary use of it was to occasionally clear weeds that grew up outside our fence next to the railroad tracks, and to clear the green bean vines from our fence at the end of the last picking…maybe to chop down the fodder after the few times we grew a little corn. The limited type of gardening we did really didn’t require a sickle for harvesting; so it wasn’t until later that I learned about a sickle’s role in gathering what is grown. Interesting, that this rusty old gadget had two potential purposes (other than giving little girls splinters and giving her big brother a yellow jacket attack while he was cutting weeds once…another story): weeding and harvesting.

We read in the Scriptures about the Word of God being a two-edged sword, and I’ve always imagined that as being useful for cutting on both the forward and the backward stroke. No motion wasted! Twice the result in half the time! Or, a dual-purpose weapon, of which there are many types of cutting instruments. Some blades are smooth on one side and serrated on the other side for when a little systematic sawing is needed (ever run into an obstacle where persistent back-and-forth re-application of the Word was needed to cut yourself free from the choking vines of the enemy?). Or, dare I suggest, the Word is also a sharp sickle that achieves two objectives: clearing out the things on our soil that hinder growth, and gathering in the harvest from the seed we’ve sown.

You may, up until now, have only been using your “sickle” for part of its potential use. Perhaps you use it to weed out the hindrances, sins, and weights that block your blessing; but then you don’t actually use it to aggressively reap your harvest. I know many people who are generous to sow and bless, but who feel guilty about being blessed in return. So they grow a magnificent garden that is left to decay, whereas the fruit could be harvested and used to be an even greater blessing. If you can’t feel good about receiving the blessing for yourself, don’t worry; it’s not all about you! The blessing is needed in order to perpetuate more blessing for more people: a testimony of God’s mercy and provision for those who are called by His name. Stop leaving your harvest un-gathered!

Still others are using the Word to receive the harvest, but their harvest is puny because it has been choked out by the sins and weights that the sickle could have cleared from the ground before and during the growing season. If you are sowing heavily but reaping sparingly (and I’m not only talking finances here…investing time, energy, passion, conviction, prayers, and love into people and worthwhile objectives while getting little in return), you may need to take that Word into the preventive and maintenance modes and start clearing the junk from your life. Is there drama or disappointment or depression where there should be peace and prosperity and perpetuation of blessing on your children and grandchildren? Do the work. Don’t let the enemy succeed in choking out your blessing through hidden sin and unbridled carnality. Whatever the reason your harvest is slim pickings, God can reveal not only the root cause, but also reveal the part of His Word that can hack away at that root!

We even have to clear out the remnants of yesterday’s harvest before tomorrow’s potential can be unlocked. Some folks leave the fodder of once-upon-a-time movements of God standing as brown, brittle memorials that He once was there in their midst, instead of tilling up the soil for another planting. Yep, sometimes preparing our hearts for what He wants to do in this season requires letting go of our expectations based on the past. Hard stuff…we can’t do it without the right tool in our hands. God’s Word does honor to the past, but it is constantly demanding that we press forward, keep working while it is day. I don’t know about you, but I desire with all my heart to be moving from glory to glory with God. I don’t want to sum my entire existence up on what He once did, when He’s still moving and doing and showing Himself mighty to save! May He look at me–and likewise, may He look at YOU, too–as good ground, and as good stewards who will put His every tool to use to maximize His kingdom and His will on earth!

The truth is, we need God’s Word in every season, in every step, in every creative process, and in every discipline of our lives. If we will get it off our coffee table, off the nail in the tool shed, and keep it polished, shining, and used regularly, it will not only inhibit the wrong kind of growth in our souls, but will enhance the potential for the right type of growth in our spirit-man! Don’t let your sickle–your precious copy of the Bible, God’s holy Word– get rusty from only occasional use. Make it your “Swiss army knife” that finds an application in every area of your life!

The Busy Signal

One night a man had a dream that left him quite shaken upon awakening. He dreamed that after repeatedly getting a busy signal into heaven, God finally answered.

The man cried out, “I have been trying to get ahold of You for DAYS! I needed Your help but every time I tried to reach You, all I got was a busy signal. Why did You have to be unavailable when I needed You the most?”

God answered, “I’m so sorry to have missed your call. I’ve implemented a screening mechanism to eliminate prank and junk calls; so perhaps where your number has shown up previously as a frequent non-prayer call, it’s been automatically routed to a busy signal.”

The man was very upset. “What do You mean, Lord? When have I ever placed a prank call on You? That’s an unfair accusation.”

The Lord said, “Well, the new system might not be without its glitches. Let me pull up your records and let’s review them. Hmmmm…I do see your number showing up quite a few times these past few days, but I don’t see any actual calls placed to speak directly to Me. The system logs each time you say My name as a call. Wow…you do say My name…a LOT. And yes, here at end of the printout, I do see where you were indeed trying to talk to Me. Your requests, however, just got shuffled in with all the other false alarm uses of My name, and thus triggered the busy signal.

You see, I used to handle all your calls directly, because My ears are attentive to the cries of my children. Any time My name is spoken, I stop and lean in to hear the conversation. Is it to Me? Is it least about Me? But reviewing these 347 times you’ve said My name over the past month, almost none of them fell into either category. You’ve exclaimed it a few dozen times while watching the ball games, the fights, in traffic…sometimes in elation, sometimes in disgust, sometimes in surprise. You’ve typed OMG about 100 times in your recent social media texts…and said it about that many times as a casual response of fake awe to other people’s stories about nothing in particular; but again, not praising Me or talking to or about Me. You’ve uttered My name every time you’ve rolled over or stood up or climbed a long flight of stairs, when you were in pain or out of breath, when the alarm clock went off and you weren’t ready to get up; but nope…not to really get My attention…not even to complain to Me or ask for My help. Again, false alarms…like a phone call where the caller hangs up as soon as I answer it. You even said My name two or three times last Tuesday after taking a bite of your wife’s freshly-baked carrot cake. Were you perhaps thanking Me retroactively? …because you didn’t give thanks before you ate it, or any of the other meals and snacks you had over the past several weeks. A deer ran out in front of your car and startled you a couple of days ago, and you blurted out My name with a couple of other words you shouldn’t have said with or without it.

So you see, My child, I wasn’t deliberately trying to ignore your call…but you have short-circuited the prayer bells of heaven by using My name in vain. I love when you say My name as you talk to Me, or to overhear you using My name in a conversation with someone else about Me. It’s sad, however, that My very own children—not just strangers who don’t even know Me—are blurting out My name as an expletive, sending scrambled signals into the heavenlies. It’s a holy name, child, and you’ve made it common by using it as a byword…not to praise Me or speak to Me or testify of Me. You’re misusing one of the most powerful gifts you’ve been given, and you’re rendering it powerless from your own lips.”

The man woke up trembling, deeply convicted because he knew that, although it was just a dream, he had indeed done exactly what the Lord had said. He got out of bed, got on his knees, and cried bitterly. He said, “Lord, I am so sorry for the many times I have misused and abused Your precious name and the name of Your Son. I will make it a point, from this day forward, to use Your name only when I’m speaking to You or about You! Forgive me for all the times You bent Your ear from heaven in response to my words, only to find out I wasn’t talking or even thinking about You at all…just blurting out empty false alarm words. I will reverence Your name for the rest of my life; and in the future when You hear it from my lips, it will be something worth lending Your attention to.”

So how about it, friend? Are you (like me), guilty of sometimes idly invoking the name of God or Jesus in times when there’s no prayer, no praise, no testimony? I’m convicted in my own heart to do better…I pray you will be, too. Let’s not disappoint the Creator of the Universe who took time to hear us even mention His name. Of course, He has no telephone answering machine, no screening service…but even in the Ten Commandments, we are instructed not to take His name in vain. We are also told that we will give account for every idle word. What do you say we work on this together? Let’s please Him when He hears us use His name. It may hasten the answer of our prayers, heighten the level of priority, when our use of that holy name is reserved only for special communication that doesn’t fall into the “junk call” category…

Obedience Above All

Years ago when I was just starting out in my young adulthood, I acquired a secondhand hot plate that had only one temperature: wide open. It was this Frankenstein monster of a thing—big, heavy, and depending on what you needed, handy—well, handy perhaps if you were planning on smelting iron ore. You didn’t dare turn your back on it for a second if you actually desired to EAT what you were cooking. It was a dumpster dive contraption that served a very temporary purpose, and I was so glad to retire it at the earliest possible opportunity…before I burned out the whole neighborhood and not just the scrambled eggs.

Sometimes we as believers are a lot like this old hot plate. We mean well; but we have no thermostat, no discipline to read, listen, and obey. And for that reason, God can only use us for very limited purposes. If we’re stubborn enough long enough, we may find ourselves completely disqualified for the Master’s use…still saved, but not submitted; still rescued, but restricted. We may be offended and affected by anything that has the ability to tip off our emotions; so although our zeal for the things of God may be genuine, it’s all over the place…instead of targeted where and to what extent God actually wants it.

The Church in the Wilderness had a lot of testing to endure; but it was as much a mercy as it was a proving ground. There were mindsets to change in between liberation from poverty and the stewardship of promise. God had to prove He could trust them for destiny. Oh, He fully knew their capabilities, but their very survival as a people—HIS PEOPLE—would depend upon how well they listened and obeyed. He wasn’t setting them up for failure: no, to be certain, the try-and-try-again course they were on was setting them up to succeed. He loved them; He was qualifying them for where He would take them, but He also required their allegiance. He was aware that some would simply refuse to be obedient—further validating what He already knew about the incompleteness of the Law. We would need a Savior. Even then, however, with a Savior, we would still have to choose to be followers and not just freelancers!

James gave us the perfect example of how serious rogue Christianity can be: But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. (James 1:22-24) It’s very possible, if we just hit-and-miss with our time in the Word and prayer, to go away and forget who we are and why we’re here. Our carnal impulses begin to render His commandments powerless in our lives because there’s no discipline to hold to the purity of obedience. We become religious rather than submitted; self-righteous rather than humble and attentive to His every instruction. James says we deceive ourselves at that point. The knob is ripped off and we run wide open, so therefore God can’t trust us for a second.

God winked at (tolerated) our ignorance initially, but He’s calling us all to repentance now. Change must come. We are in critical times where one misstep, one wrong “my way or the highway” attitude on our part can completely abort a mission, defer an entire movement. His merciful, extended testing time offers us daily opportunities to grow, to strengthen, and to prove ourselves as fit wineskins to hold His anointing; or we can go around and around the same dumb issues in our lives, unchanged and burning everything entrusted to our care. At some point, regardless, we must decide whether to follow Him wholeheartedly or be left in on the sidelines. God won’t entrust His harvest to those who’ll let it be left in ruins while they bicker about who’s in charge, who gets credit.

While He’s pruning us for fruitfulness, you can be sure He’s going to test us by changing up our plans to see whether we’ll accept His will as the final call, or whether we’ll pout and get in strife. I’ve seen it (and had it happen to me) time and again. Work toward a particular end—maybe have a new song rehearsed and ready to use in the worship set—just to have the Holy Ghost show up and shut it all down for a different direction entirely. When it happens, can we joyfully handle submission, or will we instead defy Him by trying to “get ours” while we’ve got the chance to do so? How you and I respond in these these testing moments either adds to or depreciates our stock value! Can God trust us? Is He REALLY Lord of all?

In my prayer time last night, God gave me the perfect example of how critical our obedience really is. Imagine a “SWAT team” trained for duty, who’ve rehearsed every scenario and know every drill. But someone on that team is overzealous for a chance to use that newly-acquired skill. Frustrated. Impatient. Chomping at the bit. In a hostage situation where lives are at stake, that drive to break bad can override the Commander’s instructions; and the undisciplined desire to ACT can result in unintended casualties–maybe even among that rogue member’s own unit.

We are in the spiritual world war of the ages; and if there were ever a time to be with our faces to the ground seeking God’s instruction, it’s now. Captives are in peril and He’s calling us to pull them from the very jaws of death. Many are in vulnerable, volatile situations. It’s just as important to recognize and obey the command, “stand down,” as it is the command to “open fire,” because our spotter has a better vantage point than we do. If we go by merely our own driven-ness and instincts, we can even forget who the enemy really is. We then stop engaging in heavenly warfare and just turn on anyone earthly who appears to oppose us and what we preach.

If we crucify our tendency to run wide open all the time (some things go out only by prayer and fasting), we can come out of this with more than just ourselves intact; we can rescue lives. If we have the attitude of “Don’t tell me to pull back, Lord. I came here to git-er-done and I’m not going to waste all this adrenaline on waiting and patience and doing it Your way,” however, then we forfeit His ability to use us in those very ways we long to be used.

Remember, God will always choose the most obedient, least ego-driven to carry out His will and establish His kingdom. Believe it or not, obedience will prove to become the greatest skill in your arsenal of spiritual warfare. Your qualification to open the valve all the way in those appropriate times will be determined by your willingness to hold a controlled, unambitious grip during the slow-and-steady maneuvers. If you can contain all that power but handle it with delicate precision that hears only one Voice calling the shots, God will entrust you to complete great exploits in His name! Remember, obedience above all. Master it.